Parachute May Have Link to 1971 Hijacking Case

WILLIAM YARDLEY

Thursday

Mar 27, 2008 at 4:37 AM

A worn parachute found in rural southwestern Washington may be the one used in what authorities call the only unsolved hijacking in United States history.

SEATTLE — The worn parachute that children found while playing on their family’s property in rural southwestern Washington this month may be the one that D. B. Cooper used on that mysterious night in 1971 when he carried out what the authorities call the only unsolved hijacking in United States history.

Then again, maybe not.

“It’s the right place, it’s the right color and it appears to be the right size,” said Special Agent Robbie Burroughs of the F.B.I. office in Seattle.

Then again, Ms. Burroughs said, “it’s hard to say that because it’s so tied up in knots and it’s quite deteriorated.”

On a flight to Seattle from Portland, Ore., on Nov. 24, 1971, Mr. Cooper handed a flight attendant a note saying he had a bomb in his suitcase. He allowed the plane to land in Seattle and the other passengers to get off in return for $200,000 in $20 bills, four parachutes and new leg of the trip — to Mexico. On the flight south, Mr. Cooper parachuted out the rear door.

“Flight paths, prevailing winds, the weight of Cooper holding the money — they came up with possible landing zones and they ranked them, the most likely being Zone A,” Ms. Burroughs said of investigators who worked on the case. “And this parachute was found in Zone A.”

And it was white, as was the Navy Backpack 6 parachute with a 26-foot canopy that Mr. Cooper is thought to have used. But where the parachute was found conflicts with theories developed after a boy found cash tracked to Mr. Cooper on a Columbia River beach in 1980. There’s no statute of limitations on the case, Ms. Burroughs said. Mr. Cooper “would be in his late 80s right now, pushing 90, if in fact he survived, which I really don’t think anybody thinks he did.”

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